Category Archives: Scams

The "Your Loss" Playbook

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Before we at Qntra can be sorry for your loss, someone else has to bake your loss first.When a "business" decides to live at the intersection of Bitcoin money and fiat currencies your loss tends to follow the same few steps. There may be a few variation on these steps depending on whether your chosen loser is BitInstant, MtGox, Mcxnow, Homero Garza, Buterin,1 or Bitfinex.

  1. Make, buy, or steal a thing to be calling your business. If you are a true pioneer like Intersango you make it. You buy it if you are Mt Gox or Butterfly Labs. If you are Bitfinex you just straight up steal it.2
  2. You start making noise. If you are Trendon Shavers you recruit "privileged insiders" to do your selling. If you are Butterfly Labs you buy a bunch of advertising. If you are Homero Garza you buy advertising from all the media outlets and do a bit of the privileged insider thing.
  3. You build some history for either spectacular returns and reliability. You paper over the complaints with lies and declarations of "This is just how we do things" to justify the insanity. You lean on your loyal bought and paid for noisemakers3 to toe your party line.
  4. Your Loss, we are sorry.4
  5. When the complaints get too loud the payment processor and all manner of accessories to the scheme start getting scapegoated. Mt Gox had Dwolla. BitInstant had numerous payment processors to blame. At this point the existence of the loss is clear, but some effort is made to conceal the loss is yours.
  6. Tokens! A market for them! See MtGox Bitcoins on Bitcoin Builder, BFX Tokens on Bitfinex, and the entire Paycoin scheme that emerged when GAW could no longer hold up the pretense of mining.
  7. The pretense is suddenly lifted. Every one is sorry for your loss.

History rhymes and this is the story of your losses. Just like the various color revolutions, your loss follows a pattern. We're sorry.

  1. The various altcoin scams invariably end up actually being fiat/Bitcoin interface scams when the scammers need to eat off of customer deposits and pimp their rides. ↩

  2. preferably from another scam that too moribund to care at the time  ↩

  3. Roger Ver and Andreas Derpolopolis are very popular and affordable choices.  ↩

  4. The steps following this case can be skipped in the event of Trendon Shavers  ↩

Not Quite News Roundup Xtend (TM)(R)

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Welcome to the Qntra Not quite News Roundup Xtend (TM)(R). Below are collected things that happened this week which did not independently achieve newsworthiness:

  • The United States Marshalls service announced another auction, this time only ~3 Bitcoins constituting the pot were stolen from Ross Ulbrict. The remainder come from other cases.
  • Gawker Media has celebrated their last week before becoming part of Ziff Davis by pantomiming the high school tradition of "Senior Week" and by opening an online "Men's Magazine" called "The Cuck." The Cuck's first post was:

    The Politics of Sitting Down To Pee

  • Bitfinex reopened trading as was planned. Trading included their non-consensual debt instrument.
  • Tradehill's Jared Kenna opened yet another Bitcoin "dark trading" pool.
  • Coinbase has continued their apology and solvency tour repeatedly offering that the number of Classic Ethereum tokens they lost was 40,000 United States dollars, a number denominated in a unit other than that of the actual things they lost.
  • The Huffington Post's David Seaman started off a round of Herpity Derping that supposes Barry Silbert did Ethereum Classic.
  • Barry Silbert's Coindesk announced plans to double its staff (archived).

Man Jailed After Allegedly Spiking Utah Police Sergeant's Lemonade

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A fast food worker remains jailed after a police sergeant in Layton, Utah alleges the man "spiked" his lemonade with methamphetamine and tetrahydrocannabinol (archived). While methamphetamine is water soluble and capable of entering into solution with lemonade, tetrahydrocannabinol is incapable of entering into solution with water strongly suggesting that if tetrahydrocannabinol appeared on the Sergeant's drug screen it is because he likes to get himself high. Continue reading →

Sorry For Your 36.067%

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Bitfinex made an updated announcement on the status of their Socialization plan, with users set to take a 36.067% loss in the ass when the exchange re-opens in 24-48 hours. (archived) Party officials said they will need a few more days to hatch excuses to "explain in full detail the methodology used to compute these losses". Delusional party members thanked their wise leaders for the haircut in the comments section, praising Buttfinex's decision to redistribute wealth as they saw fit. Losses are reported to be distributed against all asset classes "held" on Bitfinex. They are the 36.067%!

Bitfinex Embraces Socialism In Losing

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Buttfinex released yet another cryptic statement this evening, calling the so-called hack a "socialized loss" which likely translates into more sorry for your loss for their customers. The statement simply said there are no hard figures yet officially released, but the company promised an amended FAQ and more information regarding the extent of the breach tomorrow. Bitfinex, making socialism great again since 2013.

Bitfinex Breaks: Fiat Exchange That Never Had Anything To Do With Bitcoin Finally Goes Away

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To quote from 2013 :

MPOE-PR AvatarI. Self-moderated "support thread", filled with a bunch of socks posting nonsense. This is standard scammer operating procedure.
II. Running stolen, bug ridden software (the old Bitcoinica codebase) that has already proven itself useless in the marketplace (three times!)
III. Scammers themselves admit to crediting "investors" infinite USD/BTC to execute the naive users.
It's true that scammer tags aren't really given out much anymore, but that's no reason to allow well known scammers run amok. You have been warned.

To quote from 2016 :

We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen. We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.

Sorry for your loss.

Coinbase Engineering Director Jokes That Roger VERified Their Coins Are Safe

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Coinbase Director of Engineering Charles Lee1 (WOT:coblee) today joked on Twitter that Roger Ver has VERified the Coinbase coins are safe. Roger similarly VERified that the coins at Mt Gox were safe and present in their reserves up until the moment Mt Gox died and even then for a bit of time after that. The history of Roger VERified jokes stretches back to December of 2012.

In December 2012 Roger Ver (WOT:nonperson) used his access to the administrative panel of Blockchain.info in order to compromise the supposedly secret information of a user of that service following a dispute over a payment error made by an unrelated venture of Roger Ver's (archived). The payment error was for 4.5119 Bitcoin, an amount that summed to less than 50 United States dollars at a time when buying that amount of Bitcoin was still an easy task.2

Compounding Roger Ver's mistake was his attempt at a cover up insisting that he was a sufficiently special snowflake to have all threads discussing the matter retitled, locked,  and deleted (archived). At the time MPOE-PR (WOT:hanbot) wrote of his efforts:

We're not discussing the "change the thread title" part of your statement. We're discussing the "better yet, lock the thread and ask the mods to delete it" part of your statement.

It is not this thread that is causing undue alarm. The alarm is very much due, this BS of divulging customer details is widespread to the point of universality. Aurum did it, MtGox did it, the list is pretty much "everyone except MPEx". This has to cease, universally, as it has no place in BTC.

The other thing that has to cease is the unwarranted delusions of self importance. You personally are not great enough to request moderators to delete the signs of your stupidity "so as not to harm bitcoin". Should you want to request it, do it in the adequate terms, which are "I've been really stupid, please delete this before it ruins my reputation".

That aside, you personally are not big enough to harm Bitcoin, for one, and moreover this "too big to fail" mentality and the corresponding expectation of throwing everything to the wind for the sake of propping up random doods with self-awarded VIP status is completely irrational.

Since the Blockchain.info episode Roger Ver has continued his pursuit of pennies at the expense of potential fortunes. He publicly defended the insovlent Mt Gox, engaged in premature passport shennanigans that greatly restricted his ability to travel, further sold his illusion of credibility in the XTCoin and ClassicCoin pushes, and jumped on the ether huffing train shortly before their huffing bag detonated. Sorry for your Roger VERified loss.

  1. Of "Litecoin" infamy. Litecoin was this "better Bitcoin" endorsed by Wired Magazine in August 2013 much like DogeCoin and Ethereum would later be "better Bitcoins" endorsed by mainstream media rags until they sunk.  ↩

  2. It was indeed less that four years ago that a person could acquire 5 whole Bitcoins for less than the price of a nice restaurant meal.  ↩

Ether Huffing Gossip Continues, Exchanges Risk Insolvency

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Ethereum vs. Ethereum Classic continues to be top on the gossip list on this week's shitcoin roundup. Beleaguered fiat-to-cryptocoin exchanges Coinbase/GDAX and btc-e have both declared the "Classic" fork a scam,1 and have declared they will not release user funds on that particular side of the fork. Classic continued to have more volume overall in the past 24 hours, moving $ 38,714,800 compared to Ethereum's $ 19,722,200. Ethereum project collaborators such as MIT and now Cornell are frantically hoping to use their new magic mutable blockchain powers to convince users that this is really how crypto works, with Cornell sponsoring a "Ethereum Blockchain Bootcamp" with Pope Vitalik Butterin himself in attendance. (archived).

  1. The actual scam is that in spite of being enlightened as to how hard forks work, the leaked numerous tokens on the chain that was initially in the minority and now they have a hole in their books that can only be filled by playing fiat with declarations the coins never existed when in fact they lost them.  ↩

Ether Huffing Ecosystem Loses 10% Mining Interest Overnight, Hashrate On Bailout Free Chain Climbing

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Since Ethereum "Time Travel" hard forked away from Ethereum "Classic" the total mining interest in the two chains is down ten percent. Similarly ten twenty percent of the mining interest in the Buterin blessed1 chain featuring a time-travel hard fork attack to "undo" the whole DAO episode appears to have moved to the Classic chain. Mircea Popescu published a guide to pricing the various forks of the original Ethereum scam coin this morning.

At the point Ethereum forked it was still very much like its predecessors Dogecoin and Litecoin in being of little utility beyond service as a vehicle for disposing of actual forms of money. Like those two, Ethereum has Buterin while Litecoin had Charles Lee and the Dogecoin had Jackson Palmer and Alex Green/Moolah.io serving as their chiefs of inviting the herd to tour the woodchipper. Thanks to the passage of time blessing it with a history, Bitcoin is unlike its alternatives in many ways2 that make projecting their fork experience on to Bitcoin untenable. Sorry fork, your loss.

  1. This is the other reason why you can't have Altcoins. Any Altcoin is going to be far too new to develop the adversarial relationships between various interests that protect the chain.   ↩

  2. Gresham's law is a thing.  ↩

On Eve Of Convention Democrats Rewriting History Of Their Party

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Breitbart brings us news that Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison (WOT:nonperson) tried to rewrite the history of his party, the one set to coronate Hillary Rodham-Clinton (WOT:nonperson) as their nominee (archived). Ellison tried to declare that former four term Alabama governor, proud segregationist, and even prouder Democrat the late George Wallace was actually a Republican. In 1972 Wallace was the favored candidate to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency until he was shot five times. His campaign ended soon after the shooting. Ongoing concerns about Wallace's health enabled Carter to defeat Wallace in the 1976 primary  paving the way for Reagan convert a substantial portion of the Democratic party's base over to the minor socialist party during the 1980's. It turns out Ether huffers aren't the only people upset with the immutability of history.

I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

– 1972's long time frontrunner for the nomination in Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama's party